everything unsayable. “What did he say?” I asked, when I couldn’t ignore him any longer. “At the station?”
Rafferty shook his head. “I can’t go into that, man. Sorry.”
Those golden eyes, on me, giving away nothing. I couldn’t tell whether he knew Hugo had been lying to him and why, or what he might do about it—arrest me, drag me away for questioning, Talk and we’ll let you go back to your uncle? I thought about saying it straight out, simple as that, as if we were just two people together in this room: Look, we both know the story. Let me stay here till this is over, one way or another, and then I’ll do whatever you want. Deal?
I couldn’t trust myself to make it work. Instead I turned back to Hugo. One big hand lay loosely on the sheet beside me, and I put mine over it—it seemed like what I was supposed to do. His was cold, somehow bony and rubbery at the same time; it didn’t feel like human flesh and mine wanted to jerk away from it, but I made myself stay put because maybe he could feel things in there, maybe I had followed my mother’s hand or my father’s back to the daylight, who knew? I sat still, watching Hugo’s face and listening to the endless even beeping and catching Rafferty’s keen split-wood smell with each breath, trying not to move in case it made something happen.
* * *
I don’t have any clear sense of how long we were in the hospital. I remember bits and pieces, but not the order they came in; there was something wrong with the way time worked there, something had fallen out of it so that events didn’t link together in any sequence but just drifted round and round, disconnected, in the huge humming white-lit void.
My father was there, shirt collar twisted, hand clasping my shoulder so hard it hurt. I remembered him back when I was in hospital, the long-limbed tan creature that had paced in the shadows around his feet; I almost asked if he had brought it this time but luckily it dawned on me that it probably hadn’t been real. The nurse made notes on Hugo’s chart, adjusted dials, swapped bags. I had a go at Haskins’s diary, I told him, while you were gone. I actually found something he doesn’t hate, can you believe it? He loves reading to his kid. I can’t work out what he was reading, though; you’ll have to do it when you get home, I stuck a Post-it on the page . . . Hugo’s face didn’t change. Phil was crying, silently, wiping his eyes with a knuckle again and again.
Two visitors per bed I’m afraid said a different nurse so sometimes I was in a waiting area, rows of black plastic seating and a vending machine humming in the corner, a dumpy middle-aged woman holding hands with a blond teenage girl and both of them staring into space. My mother bent to kiss my head and when I didn’t flinch away she held me close, smell of cut grass and cold air, a deep breath before she let me go.
My family yammering questions at me, Why was he what did he but no no no that’s insane of course he didn’t what the hell— I pictured their faces if I told them the truth: Hey at this stage you should probably know it looks like it was me all along, all my fault, sorry about that guys . . . For an awful second I thought I might be going to do it, or faint, I wasn’t sure which. I sank down into a chair and put my head in my hands, which turned out to be a good move: they backed off and left me alone. Leon stalked the edges of the waiting area, gnawing his thumbnail, not looking at me.
Hugo I meant to ask you, you know what they found down the tree, did they tell you? Leaning in closer, was that a twitch of his hand— Lead soldiers. Were those yours? And my father laughing, a startled crack too loud in the dry air: Those were mine! Oliver was a little brat, whenever any of us had a favorite toy he’d get fascinated by it and try to steal it, so we were always hiding things from him . . . I must have forgotten where I’d put those! And then silence, while